Building A Koi Pond

Welcome to Building A Koi Pond where you will find down to earth information about how to build a koi pond. Good pond design and pond construction principles are important to get right from the beginning. You can’t undo bad design, and faulty construction will be next to impossible to correct later. Get these right and your backyard pond can last a lifetime and bring you years of pleasure.

Building A Koi Pond Made Easy

We want to keep things simple. Too many “experts” have made koi pond construction far more complicated than it needs to be. Don’t be scared off. Building a koi pond is not that difficult and koi fish are not hard to raise once you understand their needs and design your pond to meet those needs.

But build a koi pond? You may be asking yourself if this is a good idea. Maybe you want a backyard pond but are not sure you can tackle the project yourself . Well the good news is building koi ponds is not as hard as you may think but don’t expect to have it done in a weekend.

You can learn how to build a koi pond. You wont have to hire an expensive contractor to do it either. All you need are a few simple tools and the right information and you can start building a koi pond you will be proud of and enjoy for many years to come. So take your time and learn the basics.

If I Can Learn How To Build A Koi Pond So Can You

A while back I got the itch to start building a koi pond. At that time the internet really wasn’t what it is today. There really wasn’t a whole lot of practical information out there about pond building.

Honestly I wanted to make a pond but really didn’t have a clue where to start. It was like trying to find out about an ancient secret that was shrouded in mystery.

Oh yeah, I found a few books, but they were written by a bunch of British koi fanatics. Spending thousands of dollars on expensive and complicated filter systems or ozone generators was a bit out of my reach. Quite a bit actually. What I wanted was a hobby and not an obsession. Those books complicated everything and actually put me off from building a koi pond for a while.

Koi Pond Construction Was Beginning To Look Like A Lost Art

I just couldn’t find much practical down to earth information on pond construction and back then there were no Koi For Dummies books. Hiring a contractor to do the job was financially out of the question and besides I wanted to do this myself. I didn’t know anyone who had a pond either. A lot of what I did find was about building garden ponds which may work for goldfish but is not at all suitable for koi fish.

So I decided to learn how to build a fish pond on my own. I figured if I could keep a tractor running with baling wire and duct tape I could eventually build a koi pond and get it right.

The end result, I was able to construct my koi pond of about 9,000 gallons for under $3,000 dollars and I could have built it for much less if I knew then what I know now.

Of course there are some things I wish I had done differently. But luckily I didn’t make any major mistakes and with all the information you have right at your finger tips nowadays, you wont either.

Obviously building a pond is going to cost you some money, but you don’t need a lot of expensive specialized equipment like ozone generators or foam fractioners. You need a good pump, a skimmer and a good filtration system. Those are the basics. Oh, if you want water to stay in your pond you will also need a liner.

For me the liner was the most expensive part of my pond. You can build a good filtration system without spending thousands of dollars and there are ways to get around buying some of the expensive fittings.

What I Learned About Building A Koi Pond

I started by reading everything I could about what koi require to be healthy. There was a lot of conflicting information and opinions. But it soon became apparent that water quality was the main thing to pay attention to. What I learned was that if you take care of the water, the koi will pretty much take care of themselves.

So I began to reverse engineer everything and my primary emphasis was on pond filtration. If I could keep the water clean and moving I realized I would have already won 90% of the battle. The other 10% was figuring out how to do this without it costing an arm and a leg.

Of course if you want to spend thousands of dollars on fancy expensive equipment then there’s nothing wrong with that if you can afford it. But please be aware that there is a lot of expensive stuff people will try to sell you that you don’t really need. I have found that building a koi pond can be as simple or complicated as you want to make it.

But there are certain requirements that every pond must meet if you want to have healthy koi. So a lot of what I will share is just simple common sense. As much as possible I have tried to simplify things and write in everyday English rather than “forumese.” I hope my journey will encourage you to start building a koi pond of your own.

Categories

Building A Koi Pond is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.